Wednesday, October 17, 2018

Late October Gore

October would be my favorite month with all that pumpkin flavored ice cream and such along with golden foliage. If it wasn't for the saturation with memento mori.The last horror movie I saw was probably Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein.
I was fifteen and that hardly qualifies but I’d had enough. Earlier, I sat
through Dracula, The Wolf Man and assorted graveyards, ghouls, zombies,
vampires and haunted houses. The older I get the less capacity I have for what
goes on in those dark and stormy nights.

In fact I can’t imagine what the attraction ever was.
Are people starved for sensation? Just watch the news of carnage in Syria or
corpses half buried in the latest typhoon. If it’s rage you enjoy check out the
last Trump rally.

I abhor brutality, torture, can’t handle Holocaust
films, prison movies or even fake autopsies in T.V. dramas. I close my eyes for butchered animals and cock fights. I can only handle food fights and pillow fights. And I must admit to enjoying the controlled violence of a
football game. Indefensible, I know.

I suppose healthy people get inured to horror by
laughing at it. I wouldn’t know. I’m not that healthy. My empathy gets in the
way. I immediately become the victim of a Texas
Chainsaw Massacre. Whatever catharsis that’s supposed to take place in the
viewing doesn’t happen in my psyche. I understand folks watch Nightmare on Main Street in order not to
have nightmares. I remember seeing One
Million B.C. when I was seven years old. While Victor Mature wrestled with dinosaurs
and assorted monsters I wondered how I would ever get home outrunning a
saber-toothed tiger.

Here’s my problem. I must have suffered a mild but
chronic case of post-traumatic stress. Maybe Nosferatu took a drink from my
bloodstream. A Jungian would say I’m not facing my shadow side.I don’t disagree. Some form of arrested
development prevents me from differentiating the real from the imaginary. I
know it’s not actual but it feels that way.

If there is a membrane between the graphic images of
suffering in Yemen and the latest version of Hollywood spook… that membrane is
no longer impervious. The shock and schlock of human depravity along with
gratuitous scenes of blood-curdling beasts registers in my unconscious as a threat
to my well-being. Strange how I wasn’t nearly so much of a
scaredy-cat in childhood as I am now. I'm sure creeping mortality has something to do with it. My cerebral cortex doesn’t stand a chance
against my reptilian medulla.